Incognizant
by sunnywinterclouds
Summary: Aware of the imminent danger of becoming a walking talking cliché, Annabeth decides to just go with her heart on this one.


Dessert has just arrived at their table, and she stares down at her Crème Brûlée (which Percy just refers to as fancy custard) for a moment before blurting out, "Marry me."

It's probably a good thing he hasn't already bitten into his sadly not blue chocolate cake, because he looks like he definitely would have choked on it had it already been in his mouth.

His eyes meet hers for the first time that night. He'd been averting them towards the ceiling the entire evening, so now that she _finally_ gets a good glimpse of them they're wide and shocked and just a bit panicked at the situation he's suddenly found himself in – at the other end of a proposal.

Annabeth has reasons. She _always_ has reasons, and she always has a plan.

Two months ago, she'd sworn up and down to herself that _this_ was the month. This was the month that Percy Jackson was going to propose to her. They'd only been going out for, oh, six years, and there was no possible way this could be dragged out any longer. _Percy was going to propose to her._

Two months ago.

Needless to say, it hadn't happened.

So, okay. Percy's just a bit slow. It took him four years to finally make a move on her, even after she practically held up a sign that said _I think I might be in love with you._ No need to panic, don't sound the alarms.

But although Annabeth has many virtues and tons of wonderful qualities, patience just so happens to not be on the excessively long list (oddly, humility is missing as well).

So last month, she'd made a promise. If Percy didn't ask her to marry him by the thirty-first, _she_ was asking _him_. After all, she had to kiss him first, right? Percy is the kind of remarkable idiot that needs guidance. Percy can't handle _hints_, no matter how blatantly obvious, he needs to be flat-out _told_.

But the deadline for his proposal had come and gone, and now they're at a fancy restaurant with cushiony seats and candles and if she's gonna do this she needs to do it _now_.

Henceforth, "Marry me."

Percy retracts his fingers from the breast pocket of his suit jacket (she will never get tired of her _boyfriend_ – fiancé? – in a suit) and widens his eyes almost comically. She absently wonders what he was messing around with in there. Checking to see if he had enough money to tip the waiter? Probably not, seeing as his cake is a rich brown instead of any shade of blue, which in Percy's eyes is as valid a reason as any to be stingy with his cash.

Crap, her mind is wandering. Stupid ADHD. It always gets worse when she's nervous. Which she isn't right now, of course.

Percy makes a little noise in the back of his throat and stares at her. Not in an awestruck, joyful kind of way, but in more of an _are-you-fucking-kidding-me_ manner.

Annabeth shifts in her seat just a bit. He's just… surprised. Taken aback. He should be – it's not every day that your girlfriend proposes to you. This is going fine.

Seeing as it's technically _his_ job to propose in the first place, Annabeth feels she is perfectly justified in not presenting him with a soulful and eloquent speech about her _feelings_. But, seeing as he doesn't seem to be planning on answering her any time soon, she decides to take the plunge.

As a daughter of a Athena, her first thought is to present a logical argument that he can't fight against. _Percy, we've been a strong couple for a significant amount of time and we live in the same apartment and I can't foresee any conceivable scenarios in which either of us severs our –_

She scratches it out mentally before she even has a chance to finish the thought. Percy often complains that her factual reasoning is quite unromantic, and she had to admit that it had ruined more than a few precious moments between the two of them. Seeing as she hasn't already prepared a rough draft of this speech, she goes with her backup plan – winging it.

She thinks Percy would appreciate that.

Aware of the imminent danger of becoming a walking talking cliché, Annabeth decides to just go with her heart on this one.

"I love you."

He continues to gape at her like he's in one of those LOLcat photos that Rachel keeps sending her just because she knows they piss her off. She presses on.

"And… I want to spend the rest of my life with you. No questions asked."

She's actually quite surprised to find that she doesn't even wince as the Hallmark movie worthy words tumble out of her mouth. Even weirder, she _means_ them. Yes, she knows she loves Percy, and yes, her future would be bleak at best without him, but since when is _she_ cheesy?

Still no reaction from Percy. She's glad that they're in a corner booth, because otherwise they'd probably be getting some pretty odd glances.

She can imagine it in her head. _Mommy, why is that incredibly handsome man pretending to be a fish?_

Annabeth tries her hardest to get her mind back on topic. ADHD is _harsh._

"So… so let's get married," she finishes lamely, and gives him her most radiant smile. Definitely not her best presentation, not by a long shot, and that conclusion was just _disgracefully_ weak, but her thesis was clear and her argument was valid and all of her points were strong.

"Are you… are you _serious?_"

Those aren't exactly the first words one would like to hear after placing their heart on the table and proposing to their significant other, but Percy says them anyway. Annabeth's stomach sinks down to her toes.

She turns to look behind her, thinking maybe a hellhound has barged into the restaurant and is currently eating a chef and Percy is actually yelling at the gods for ruining the moment and not at her for creating it.

No such luck.

"I… yes?"

He splutters a bit and stands up, knocking over his chair and spilling his glass of coke onto the white table cloth. She scrambles to pick it up, looking around for the waiter to make sure he hasn't seen. Luckily, he doesn't seem to notice, but Percy doesn't either.

"You. Have. _Got _to be kidding me."

Crap. Crap, crap, _crap,_ she has no idea what to do now. She wonders if there's a god of time travel she could pray to in order to undo this entire night.

Except, no. She wants to marry him. She is _not_ going to take back this conversation.

"I… no? No! I mean, yes. I want to get married."

He stares at her, and stares and stares and stares before finally saying, "Annabeth Chase, you have the worst timing in the entire freaking world."

Her heart feels like lead. He's… rejecting her? Thinking about it? She isn't sure.

"Wha–"

"Do you… do you have_ any_ idea how long I've been planning this?" he asks weakly, still looking quite thunderstruck. The anger has completely seeped out of his expression, though, so she thanks the gods for the little things.

"Seriously, Annabeth. I mean… _months._ I thought about it a lot and I decided, you know, it's time, right? And then you just… you just… honestly."

He's not exactly being very clear, and she really still doesn't get it all, and she's about to ask him what the hell he's –

"Oh."

_That _is why he'd brought her here. To break up with her.

Oh, gods. That explains _everything._ The nervousness on his part, his refusal to make eye contact with her, the fancy restaurant to ease the pain (which isn't fucking working at all), his shock and anger, he… and… everything.

It just explains _everything_.

All the blood drains from her face. She'd just… she'd just proposed to Percy… on the same night he was planning to break up with her… she… he… her head is so fuzzy she can't even think straight.

She knows she should feel humiliated, embarrassed, angry, and she _does_, but… but not really. Percy is breaking up with her. Percy, her best friend since the age of twelve, the love of her life, the one person she's ever considered spending forever with, the _only guy she has ever kissed,_ is breaking up with her.

She can't even bring herself to properly feel anything more than sheer and utter heartbreak.

"I," she manages to get out, but it's strangled and quiet and _pathetic_ and she can't stay at this table with a man that doesn't love her anymore for another fucking _second_, especially when she's still dead-set on being with him until the world ends, so she stumbles out of her chair and practically sprints towards the exit.

She thinks maybe she hears Percy calling out after her, but she doesn't care. Or, more accurately, she _does_ care but she doesn't have the strength to face the reality of it all.

Ten years. _Ten years,_ he'd been a constant in her life. Eight years she'd been in love with him. Six they'd been together. And now… now it's over. It's gone.

She'd like to say that the years she's spent with him were waste, a regret, but she can't. She knows she'll never be able to. Percy is the best thing that ever happened to her, _she doesn't want to lose him._

Annabeth doesn't cry, ever_,_ not unless it's a life-or-death, end-of-the-world situation, and even then it's not really set in stone. She cries when she thinks Percy's going to die. She cries when she thinks she's going to lose him. But here… now… she _has_ lost him. He's still alive, he's still Percy, and if she has to choose between Percy not loving her and Percy dying she will _forever _choose the former but she still doesn't have him anymore.

It's close enough, she decides.

She collapses against a tree near the entrance of the restaurant and _bawls._

Maybe a few minutes later, she feels the gentle strength of a warm hand on her shoulder. Percy. She wonders absently he'd taken so long to follow her – she'd honestly expected him to be two steps behind her.

"You know," he says suddenly, almost as if he can read her mind, "they almost arrested me for trying to leave without paying the tab. _And_ I had to buy a dessert that I didn't get to eat."

She lets out a choked little laugh/sob. This can't be happening. He _can't_ be breaking up with her, not when he knows her well enough to answer questions she hasn't even asked out loud.

"Annabeth, what's wrong? I thought –"

"What's _wrong?_ You – you just – I can't _believe _you, Percy!"

She turns around to face him, which is a big mistake. His eyes are worried and cautious and greener than ever, and all she wants to do is collapse into his arms and _make_ him love her. There's gotta be some sort of math equation or logical strategy to make things go back to normal.

"I'm sorry," he says, blushing a bit. "I overreacted back there, and I'm sorry. I feel like a jerk."

"You _are_ a jerk," she say, but there's no bite in it. It's flat. Just… hollow. She buries her head in her hands and tries her best to blink away the tears before Percy sees them.

"Annabeth, are you alright? I really… I didn't mean to yell at you."

He looks like he's definitely _trying _to be serious, but he fails at it quite monumentally as a grin splits across his face.

"But… I can take all this as a yes, right?"

She lets that sink it, and then realizes she has no grip whatsoever on understanding what he just said.

"I… what?"

His eyes crinkle around the corners, he's smiling so hard.

"You know. Us. Getting married. _Us._" His blindingly happy grin gets even bigger, if that's possible, and Annabeth looks around, waiting to get hit by a bus. With Percy around, it's probably a valid concern.

Nothing happens. The world doesn't end. There's not even an explosion. Huh.

"But – I – you – you just – you just broke _up_ with me!"

Even as she says it, the reality of the situation dawns on her, and she has to restrain herself from turning around and hitting her head repeatedly against the bark of the tree trunk for misreading the situation so epically.

But… she'd never ever in her entire _life_ been happier to be wrong.

Percy's not _breaking up with her._

Percy and herself had tried to propose to each other on the _same freaking night_.

Maybe, she thinks, as the enormous weight that had settled itself on her chest suddenly becomes filled with helium, they're _just that in sync._

Percy, always a few steps behind her, finally gets it as well – she can see the exact moment he understands, she can read him so well, and it makes her _so_ happy – and he starts _laughing._ He just laughs and laughs and it's so contagious that she starts laughing, too.

They're a ridiculous sight, she's sure, dressed up in their fancy clothing and laughing by a tree in the middle of the city, but she honestly can_not_ care less.

"And you… and you call _me_ a seaweed brain," Percy says finally, wiping at his eyes, but she's too ecstatic to punch him right now, so she settles for beaming and grabbing his hand instead.

"Shut up. I want my ring."

He reaches into his breast pocket complacently – so _that's _what he'd been messing with, she really is an idiot– and pulls out a ring.

"Annabeth Chase," he says dramatically, his mouth set in a straight line (though his sparkling eyes smile for him), "you are the dumbest daughter of Athena in the entire world, but still a hundred times smarter than me, and I hereby declare you perfect for me and kind of just perfect in general. Will you marry me?"

It's an obsolete question, after the events of the last twenty minutes, but she nods anyway and throws her arms around him.

"That was the worst proposal speech I've ever heard," she whispers into his shoulder, her heart fluttering around like a butterfly in her chest.

"Better than yours," he murmurs back, and when she kisses him she thinks that this is definitely going to be included in the best man speech at their wedding.


End file.
